Newspaper Quotes

Reporters from newspapers, television, and radio regularly ask us our views on current economic developments and issues in the Puget
Sound region. Here are a few examples from local newspapers:

“For sanity and clarity in what seems an impossible housing market, I turn again to economic forecasters Dick Conway and
Doug Pedersen, whose regional outlook is used by lots of smart people. Conway and Pedersen have been almost alone in examining
the true cost of housing based, not on sticker shock, but real income…Their premise, shown in the data, is that increases in home
prices have been more than offset by increases in incomes and a relative decline interest rates compared to, say, 20 years ago.
‘As a result,’ they write, ‘homes are more affordable today—and by a wide margin—than they were in 1990…’ ”
—“More proof: Area's homes are not all that expensive” The Seattle Times, June 14, 1999

“Job loss estimates for 2001 nearly doubled, from 35,000 to 65,000, in large part because of the limited nature of the initial
estimate, economists say…‘When you have a downturn, a lot of the job losses occur in small firms because small firms tend to be
more vulnerable,’ said Dick Conway, co-author of The Puget Sound Economic Forecaster…Conway also theorized that the demise
of small dot-com enterprises around the Puget Sound may have skewed the jobs data…And King County businesses are losing
many of those jobs, since the (Puget Sound) region is home to 60 percent of the state’s economic activity, Conway says.”
—"No quick recovery for state economy" Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 9, 2002

“A good indicator of future economic conditions in the Puget Sound area turned sharply negative in the first quarter…The Puget
Sound Index of Leading Economic Indicators, compiled by regional economists Dick Conway and Doug Pedersen, dropped 1.6 percent
in the first quarter (1999). The index has a strong track record of predicting changes in the economy.
—"The Newsletter" The Seattle Times, June 10, 1999